Tell what it was like to grow up intellectual in an anti-intellectual world

In My Humble Opinion
1

Being asked, “How can you just sit and actually read a book?”
Your extended family regarding you as a bizarre mutant from outer space just because you have an intellect.
Getting beat up on the playground for talking about science in school.
Feeling like Roald Dahl’s Matilda.

We all have our stories. For me, growing up Italian-American in Cleveland was not the most nurturing environment for the intellect. You would think that Italians would have an appreciation for being the people of Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Vivaldi, Fermi, etc. But the ones I knew seemed to have been selected to be ignorant of anything cultural beyond Franki Valli. I had to get out of there as soon as I reached college age, you know?

2

I know what you went through! I grew up in similar circumstances, in a blue-collar town. My peers thought that I was extremely weird for wanting to discuss books, politics, etc. When I told my mother that I wanted to see a play, she was amazed. Youhave really unlocked some memories…most people don’t realize how anti-intellectual many stratums of society are. And for intellectuals, you cannot realize how weird it feels to be surroundedby people who have no interests beyond the next high school football game. Fortuinately, in an urban area, you can always find people with similar interests…but never try to live in a blue-collar town-you won’t fit in al all!

3

I suppose I was lucky in that I had a somewhat different experience. Growing up in a small rural town, there weren’t a lot of intellectual role models around. Heck, I wasn’t aware of any college educated adults (outside of school teachers) at all. However, I was able to become part of the brainy crowd. And where we were, the brainy crowd was not treated as outcasts. Didn’t suffer any abuse or ostracism, quite the opposite, I feel we were rather respected.

It was only as an adult that I became aware of the rampant anti-intellectualism in our society. There are plenty of smart, educated, informed people around, to be sure. But there is strong undercurrent in popular culture and the media to be proudly anti-intellectual, IMHO. Even among educated people I often see rejection of knowledge, lack of curiosity, misplaced skepticism (Dubya is the poster boy, he’s got a Harvard MBA!)

That being said, the best I recommend is to always seek out the bright people where ever you are, you will find yourself welcome.

4

I learned at a very young age to discern that glazed-over, I-have-no-idea-what-the-hell-you’re-talking-about look… and then immediately stop talking. I learned to shut up when I realized I was talking over someone else’s head. I’ve also learned to try to relate to people on their own level – whatever that might be. IMHO, if we are the “intellectuals” and must adapt to life in a non-intellectual world, then the onus is on us to adapt. If I’m so damn smart, then I ought to be able to talk to anybody without losing them or making them resent me. Throwing around $5 dollar words at a steelworkers’ union meeting would probably not be the smartest choice one could make.

5

I have found that I now use words that are small. This is now so much a part of me that I can do it on the fly, and fast. But, it is hard to say just what I mean when I can only use small words.

It is my choice to do so cuz I when I left school I found that folks would not quite get what I meant. When I meet my old school friends and I can talk, like you know, normal, it is as if a spring breeze goes through my mind. I have also learned to say one thing at a time – to keep it simple. And stuff like that.

6

My folks were fairly intellectual but mostly in ways confined to astronomy, physics, chemistry, and math (i.e., not much for introspective ponderings, meaning-of-life questionings, ethical & political musings, etc).

I was made fun of and verbally & physically harassed at school and for many years assumed it was because I was intellectual (“smart”) and they weren’t. Eventually I figured out that there were other factors but this was certainly part of it.

Teachers did not encourage inquiry and curiosity much either.

7

I’m the black sheep of my family. Dissed for figuring out what I wanted to do in Cegep, dissed for going to University, Dissed for graduating. Dissed for earning decent money for sitting on my ass (or at least not doing any heavy lifting). Yup, I get no respect from my family.

Screw 'em.

8

Being told I talked too much is one of my first memories. My mother begged the local superintendent of schools to let me start kindergarten at age three because I was driving her nuts at home, forever trying to slip out of the house and go to school, which was just up the block. I had to wait until I was 4. I was not physically harassed much—I was a big kid for my age, I had several cousins and siblings in the same school and my father was the main source of jobs in the community and the local baseball coach. My mom translated for local families for free and at almost anytime, helping them send money to their loved ones or getting them admitted to the hospital. I was considered boring by most of the girls—I didn’t want to hang out in front of the drive-in and wait for boys to happen along. I was considered stuck-up by most of the boys----I didn’t want to ride around in their cars, I didn’t want presents, I wanted them to talk to me. It was a little lonely----I know my parents loved me and treasured me and bought me books and lessons and were very proud of me, but at home, I always talked too much.

9

[ul]A Barbarian cannot hope to get much respect. ;)[/ul]

10

I always thought that talking too much was more a sign of an air head.
:cool: [sup]Of course, there are always exceptions.[/sup][sub]My wife for instance.[/sub]

11

My Father has never forgiven me for prefering books over sports. He was a professional athlete, a boxer, and has not one shred of respect for me.

When I talk, he ignores me the same way he used to ignore our dog when he barked. :frowning:

12

My biggest problem was dating not-so-smart guys. I mean, what’s the point in having a conversation if you have to explain what parts make up an atom (or some such thing)? Luckily, I wised up enough and married a man with a college degree (I don’t quite have mine yet).

My husband’s family is so divided. On his mother’s side, every single cousin and spouse (except for me and the ones who are too young) have at least one college degree. Three of them work for NASA, two for the government - you get what I’m saying here. One of his cousins is BORED at NASA (because her project is on hold and has been for years), so she’s going to medical school to become a neurologist!! (Rocket scientist to brain surgeon - please hold down the jokes.)
On the other side of the tree, only one cousin (other than my husband and his brother) has even GONE to college. She graduated last May. His aunts and uncles can’t see what the big deal is with college. Their kids can get perfectly good factory line jobs the day after they graduate high school. The adults are getting a little better, as the rest of the kids in the family encourage the younger cousins to continue their education.

13

I agree with the OP…

I can’t stand being around clueless people who’ve never read a darn book (outside of elementary/high school)…or those who say, as the OP said, “How can you just sit around all day and read…blah blah blah”.

I love reading. I love books. Yes, I watch NOVA and TLC and Discovery Channel all the time.

I have a (soon to be ex) friend who has not heard of Fortune magazine & has never watched the Discovery Channel or NOVA or PBS…

Not that Fortune is any real intellectual reading (other than for business issues)…but for crying out loud…“ever hear of the Forturne 500 companies!!!”

It’s amazing how many people are intellectual idiots. I, personally choose not to be around people like that.

14

Oh, I forgot to mention that while growing up, my parent’s subscribed to Nat’l Geographic.

I was constantly reading that, plus the children’s version World Magazine. Loved the free, huge posters of animals each month!

15

Oh, thank goodness. I’m getting the responses I’d been hoping for. This is turning out to be a good thread. I feel reassured and in good company, not the freak I’m usually made out to be. :slight_smile:

What’s in the background in my mind is the book Anti-intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter (New York: Knopf, 1963). Well, I’d always meant to read it since I noticed it in a library I was working in about 10 years ago. I really should find a copy and read it to understand better how Adlai Stevenson was derided as an “egghead” by Republicans and why Dubya (good call, Icarus) can get so many votes by blatantly insulting the intelligence of the American people. The article “Reagan’s Son” in this week’s New York Times Magazine is a fairly blatant example of this insult. It’s a puff piece masquerading as serious political analysis that says the ultra-conservative Republican strategists deliberately avoided policy discussions in the campaign, since that would expose how inimical to most Americans their policies are. Instead they highlight how Dubya is the sort of guy you can feel “comfortable” with and “trust” to run the country (translation: airheadedness wins).

Anyway, I thought you might like to check out Hofstadter’s book since it sheds some light on the historical background of our shared predicament.

16

I’m lucky to have a supportive and, for the most part, pretty nerdy nuclear family, and go to a high school program with a convoluted application process and a high minimum IQ requirement. I know IQ tests are not valid measures of intelligence, but the fact that one has to apply to the school at all weeds out a lot of the lass curious people and means that I’ve been able to find a lot of friends with academic ambitions like mine.

However, sometimes I still do encounter anti-intellectualism from the less motivated kids in my school and from people in my extended family (case in point: a cousin of mine asked me for a calculus lesson. I taught her some and was getting pretty excited about it until it dawned on me that she was making fun of me. Also, the too-oft-heard “Oh, you’re going to college? That’s nice. You’ll meet good men there, I bet.”)

I’m not as oppressed as the vast majority of smart kids growing up in America, I guess.

17

feff you’re preaching to the choir here alright!

Every time I opened my mouth at school, I revealed myself as a freak. A hideous, evil freak who gasp used words consisting of more than one syllable and who actually read books! Of my own free will! When I used a word that the other kids didn’t know, (which was pretty much every time I said anything) I got bullied, and these weren’t obscure words either, words like ‘gazelle’ and ‘surrealist’, I thought these were everyday words that everybody knew! Apparantly not. I couldn’t believe one day when I heard a girl on a radio competition who didn’t know what a lemming was! I said this to a girl at school and she didn’t know what one was either! :eek:

I knew what a lemming was when I was 4! Granted, I was really into Zoology and natural history (hey not to boast but I knew all about evolutionary theory and latin classification of species when I was barely five, how did I know this? I read books! without being forced! Golly jeepers!) but I totally could not believe that teenagers didn’t know what a lemming was! or a gazelle!

There was a joke I heard on the radio-“How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb-Fish” I told this to the girl at school and got a blank look. Yes, you guessed it she had no idea what a surrealist was! I tried to explain the concept of surrealism but it was like talking to a brick wall. Not only did she not know, guess what? She had no desire to know! It was like a deep black hole of ignorance, and worse ignorance that was gloried in.

And don’t get into the time I tried to convince her to read Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and she refused cos there was too many words on the front page (give me strength) and the time I was sneered at with the good old 'have you swallowed a dictionary?" for daring to use the word ‘endeavour’…and I was regularly made to feel like I was the one in the wrong for making everbody feel stupid and inferior.

Well guess what! You were stupid and inferior! If you didn’t want to feel that way maybe you should have read a Bloody book! GAAAH…still feel a bit angry about this as you may be able to tell…

And I remember a teacher was amazed that I was reading Watership Down because it was a gasp long book! That book was in the school library for 20 years and I think I was the only one who read it in all that time :rolleyes:

Man! I feel better now! :slight_smile:

18

To be honest I find intellectuals some of the least welcoming people around. I went to grade school in a very progressive, intellectual school. Basically amoung the students and the parents it was all a contest" My 3rd grader has read ‘The Brothers Karamovoz’ but I guess yours hasn’t " with a big sneer. And at high-school and college, the intelectuals tended to be condesending, ivory-tower, and more judgemental than anybody else I have met. I someone wants to discuss existentialism, then I love to do it, because it is one of the many subjects I am interested in, but usually the conversation just devolves into them trying to prove they are more intellectual by naming every obscure existential work they have read, and you have not. That’s why I love dive bars, talking about sports or cars with someone you just met is usually just a lot more fun cause there is no competetion.

19

wolfman: That’s been my experience with intellectuals. I generally avoid anyone that self-styles themselves as an intellectual.

I know lot’s of people who are intellectuals, but usually people would claim the title of themselves, are either assholes, or people who have a much higher esteem of their intelligence than they deserve.

In the spirit of the thread, something that I come across often is having trouble articulating things that are elementary to me. For a while I would just look at people like they were idiots for not getting it, as I’ve gotten older I have come more to the opinion that everything is explainable, we just need to find a better way to explain it. So I feel that the lack of communication is just that, a lack of communication and less of an indication of the disparity of our intelligence.

Some anecdotes from my childhood:

School bully from junior High is in my sophomore biology class, I’d been gone from this school system for a year, and had just transferred back, and this kid was NOT going to bully me anymore, he could beat the shit out of me if he wanted to. He tried to bully me, and I wouldn’t take it, then he relaxed and started asking me for the things he wanted from me so I compromised and let him copy my homework. We got to talking eventually because I sat next to him, he asked if I was going to read the book assigned (Sphere by Michael Crichton) I said, no, I’ve already read it. He asked me why I read, and I realized he wasn’t even making fun of me, he was genuinely curious, so I told him how my Dad reads constantly and I just took it off his bookshelf. He told me that his Dad never reads, and he seemed a little sad. This brief stint sitting next to him actually makes me think of him from time to time and wonder what he’s doing and hope he’s doing well, I think he dropped out though.

Another example is my uncle who was made uncomfortable by my using big words, which I would sometimes use incorrectly, and he made a big deal out of it, so far as talking to my father about it, saying that I was trying to make him feel dumb. (Though I never used a word he didn’t know) and my Dad said, “No that’s genuinely the way he talks.”

My father is fairly “intellectual” as was my mother, and my step-mother to some degree, though less so. My step-mother would often try and talk me out of paths to success telling me that the bar was out of my reach. Unfortunately I listened to her, though now I know she was wrong, because I’ve done some of the things that were too far up there, or at least associated with people who do them, so I know what’s required. I think in her mind it was a way to scare me into getting better grades. Who knows?

Generally what would get me in more trouble with other kids than anything was being excited about a good grade on a test they didn’t get a good grade on. Like getting a 105% on a test I didn’t even study for in the 8th grade. That was when I started to realize that I was somewhat elitist about my intelligence, and I think the society I was in kind of encouraged that. Unfortunately in the area that I grew up in, I genuinely was one of the smartest people I knew, so I was stultified into inaction because I was already at the cream of the crop, and didn’t have examples with which to compete, or aspire to. It’s only now that I am starting to realize that my friends are pretty much on par with my intelligence, as I hang out with a different crowd that is a group of genuinely highly intelligent people.

Erek

20

Yes, yes, God, yes!

Oh, how I was tortured in public high school!

My peers, who felt that the pinnacle of culture had been reached with professional wrestling, and that Danielle Steele was fine literature regarded me as something distasteful and subversive lurking in their midst. I was beaten up twice for trying to read on the school bus, and had my locker broken into numerous times and the books therein laughingly destroyed.

I spent a lot of time in the school library, which seemed to be a contaminated zone, inhabited only by the librarian, myself, and a few other pale, and skittish teens, who never made eye contact, and hunched suspiciously whenever anyone neared them. I think I ate lunch twice while I attended that school. The rest of the time, I hid.

Even the teachers regarded me with suspicion. Several of my papers were refused because they “sounded too smart” and I used “too many big words” for it not to have been plagarized.

My parents transferred me to a private school, which touted its “high academic standards.” Unfortunately, it was a religious school, whose science text book showed people hunting dinosaurs (who were killed off in Noah’s Flood) and whose history books had glaring innacuracies. A curious and questioning mind was not welcomed there, either, I assure you. Daily, I was told I was going to burn in hell.

My family have always been proud of me. They’re a family of readers, mainly light fiction, but believed firmly that if I was curious about a subject, they should buy me a few books on it, and that I should read whatever I wanted. When a question comes up in the family (a cousin is doing a history report, or mom wants to know who our Representative is) I’m the one they call.

Unfortunately, I live in a small community, with a very small intellectual community, if any. I work in the local museum, so I get to meet a lot of interesting people, and have good conversations, but I know the lonliness of reading something interesting and having no one to tell very well indeed.